Pixadores in the city: (i)legalities and ambiguities in the extensive relationships of pixação in Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This article presents part of my Master’s thesis final results, which consisted in establishing an ethnography with taggers in the city of Belo Horizonte (CARVALHO, 2013). From participant observation on the practice and meeting spaces of taggers and the analysis of diverse sources of research, we can investigate the (il)legal strategies used by the Military Police and the Government to inhibit and punish the actions of taggers. Thus, we ethnography some forms of police violence, as well as the strategies used by these taggers to resist and to circumvent these coercive mechanisms. Were numerous comments and negative representations, mapped by me, directed by these taggers against the various spheres of governmental activity. In short, we present that the repression acts retroactively, which means, repressing but also contributing to the practice of tagging.